A solar cell is a photovoltaic (PV) device having one or more photovoltaic junctions. Each junction is formed by a photovoltaic semiconductor layer. At each junction, incident light energy, and specifically solar energy, is converted to electrical energy through the photovoltaic effect.
The interest in solar cells has been increasing due to concerns regarding pollution and limited available resources. This interest has been for both terrestrial and non-terrestrial applications. In space applications, the use of nuclear or battery power greatly increases a spacecraft's payload for a given amount of required power to operate the satellite. Increasing the payload of a spacecraft in this manner increases the cost of a launch more than linearly. With the ready availability of solar energy in space for a spacecraft such as a satellite, the conversion of solar energy into electrical energy may be a good alternative to an increased payload.
The cost per watt of electrical power generation capacity of photovoltaic systems inhibits their widespread use in terrestrial applications. The conversion efficiency of sunlight to electricity may be critically important for terrestrial PV systems, since increased efficiency usually results in a reduction of related electricity generation system components (such as cell area, module or collector area, support structures, and land area) for a required power output of the system. For example, in concentrator solar cell systems which concentrate sunlight from around 2 to around 2000 times onto the solar cell, an increase in efficiency typically results in a proportionate reduction of an area comprising expensive concentrating optics.
To increase the electrical power output of such cells, multiple subcells or layers having different energy bandgaps have been stacked so that each subcell or layer can absorb a different part of the wide energy distribution in the sunlight. This arrangement is advantageous, since each photon absorbed in a subcell corresponds to one unit of charge that is collected at the subcell operating voltage, which is approximately linearly dependent upon the band gap of the semiconductor material of the subcell. Since the output power is the product of voltage and current, an ideally efficient solar cell would have a large number of subcells, each absorbing only photons of energy negligibly greater than its band gap.
The most efficient and therefore dominant multijunction (MJ) PV cell technology is the GaInP/Ga(In)As/Ge cell structure. Here the use of parentheses in the Ga(In)As middle subcell material indicates that the incorporation of indium in the middle cell is optional, so that the composition of the middle cell may be either GaAs or GaInAs. These monolithic cells may be grown lattice-matched to GaAs or Ge, and may have only the top two junctions active with an inactive Ge substrate (2-junction or 2J cells), or all three junctions may be active (3-junction or 3J cells). While variations on this material system, such as AlGaInP or lattice-mismatched GaInP top cells, might provide a more ideal match of band gaps to the solar spectrum, practical considerations have indicated that lattice-matched GaInP is preferred for large-scale production.
In monolithic, series-interconnected, 2-junction and 3-junction GaInP/Ga(In)As/Ge solar cells, it is desirable for the GaInP top subcell to have nearly the same photogenerated current density as the Ga(In)As subcell. If the currents are different, the subcell with the lowest photogenerated current will limit the current through all of the series-interconnected subcells in the multijunction (MJ) cell, and excess photogenerated current in other subcells is wasted. Limiting the current in this manner results in a severe penalty on the MJ cell efficiency.
At the lattice constant of Ge (or of GaAs) substrates, GaInP grown under conventional conditions has an ordered group-III sublattice and therefore has a band gap which is too low to achieve the desired current match between subcells in the unconcentrated or concentrated AM0 space solar spectrum, the unconcentrated or concentrated AM1.5D and AM1.5G terrestrial solar spectra, and other solar spectra, unless the top subcell is purposely made optically thin, as in U.S. Pat. No. 5,223,043.
Whether in the multiple junction or single junction PV device, a conventional characteristic of PV cells has been the use of a window layer on an emitter layer disposed on the base of the PV cell. The primary function of the window layer is to reduce minority-carrier recombination (i.e., to passivate) the front surface of the emitter. Additionally, the optical properties of the window material must be such that as much light as possible is transmitted to lower cell layers where the photogenerated charge carriers can be collected more efficiently, or if there is substantial light absorption in the window, the minority-carrier lifetime in the window must be sufficiently long for the carriers to be collected efficiently at the p-n junction between the emitter and base of the PV cell. Similarly, a back-surface field (BSF) structure below the PV cell base has been used to reduce minority-carrier recombination at the back surface of the base. As for the window, the BSF structure (referred to here simply as a BSF, for brevity) must have optical properties which allow most of the light that can be used by the subcells beneath the BSF to be transmitted by the BSF, and/or the minority-carrier properties in the BSF must be such that electrons and holes which are generated by light absorption in the BSF are efficiently collected at the p-n junction of the PV cell.
For the multiple-subcell PV device, the efficiency may be limited by the requirement of low-resistance interfaces between the individual cells to enable the generated current to flow from one cell to the next. Accordingly, in a monolithic structure, tunnel junctions have been used to minimize the blockage of current flow. In addition to providing the lowest resistance path possible between adjacent subcells, the tunnel junction should also be transparent to wavelengths of light that can be used by lower subcells in the MJ stack, because of the poor collection efficiency of carriers photogenerated in the tunnel junction region.
These properties are all dependent on the bandgap, doping levels, optical properties, and minority-carrier recombination and diffusion properties of the base, emitter, window, BSF, and tunnel junction layers employed in the device. The semiconductor properties of these cell layers may be enhanced or degraded for a MJ PV device by the choice of substrate orientation.
There exists a need for multijunction solar (photovoltaic) cells with improved power output, efficiency, performance, and cost effectiveness.